Tag Archives: Quinn Hatfield

While most well meaning citizens of the world are busy embarking on New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight, eat better, exercise more and indulge less, the Cute Gardener and I decided to go the masochistic route as the non-conformists we are and celebrate 2015 with a Karen Hatfield-inspired bread bath.

Karen Hatfield is the prettier half of the husband wife team making some of the best food Los Angeles has to offer. Husband Quinn’s Hatfield’s Restaurant provided one of the dinners early on in my relationship with the CG that made me swoon the most. It is where I had an extremely memorable coconut soup, lamb lollipop and earl grey milkshake before jumping on a flight mid-summer to Santa Fe to see one of my best friend’s get married; a multi-course meal that will forever be connected to whimsy and romance in my mind. It is also where the CG and I ducked in post-dinner elsewhere for an unconventional dessert of exquisite agnolotti and popcorn at the bar one eclectic evening. Good times.

Hatfield’s decided to close its doors this past month to much local chagrin but I think it was a smart move. The CG was already talking about how, after being there multiple times, the food was losing its shine. Not because it was no longer good, but because it was no longer new. The couple decided the restaurant had run its course and are now working on a new venture called Odys and Penelope which is garnering much anticipation. Like true artists they allowed a vision to materialize in Hatfield’s, gave it their all, and are now moving on to the next project. Restaurateurs should be so lucky.

Odys and Penelope will be a few doors down from Karen’s pastry chef passion pit The Sycamore Kitchen. Having never been to the trendy bakery/cafe, we decided to spend New Year’s weekend trying out the goods. At eleven a.m. on a Saturday the line to the order counter was twenty people deep and all seats were taken. The twenty minute wait gave us plenty of time to view the salivation-starter baked goods case overflowing with dense, sweet loaf breads of chocolate, lemon and pumpkin, top hat high quiches, shiny iced fennel flower shaped cookies and thick rosemary shortbread triangles. Normally we aren’t seduced by this kind of display but if Karen makes food anywhere near like her husband we knew we would want to try everything. After ordering our lunch, we added a chocolate chip rye cookie, salted caramel pecan babka, onion and chorizo roll and flaky buttercup to go.

Our meal was heavenly. The woman knows how to bake. Even though I am a pork belly whore by nature, I felt the star of my Double BLT was not the tender, flabby, luscious pork stuffed with avocado, perfectly cooked bacon and butter lettuce into the sandwich, but the soft, doughy, white bread that acted as a perfect sponge to the balsamic-tinged mayo that brightened the traditional dish into something meriting praise. The CG’s grilled short rib sandwich was a runny gooey pile of yum on an equally great piece of bread seared up nicely on the outside. If Karen did bread this good, I couldn’t wait to try my sweets.

The chocolate chip rye cookie didn’t last five minutes after arriving home. It was a crunchy mess with melted disks of chocolate on the inside, accentuated by the sweet-detracting acerbic nature of rye—perfect for a grain lover like me. Later that evening, we participated in a Roman-orgy worthy carb fest. Leftover regular and marbled rye from Diamond Bakery and Brent’s (another two favorite bread joints in L.A.) surrounded tomatoes on a platter for use as carriers of the CG’s homemade chicken liver mousse.

The onion chorizo roll was heated so that the fat from the meat mingled with the warm, sweet onions within the crispy bread exterior. We cut the buttercup into fourths so that we could lick the sweet insides of sugary butter prior to popping the rest of the croissant like, crystal sugar coated bliss into our mouths. We sipped champagne along with this gluttony until the main course was through.